


The Snow Bear Plunge

by Chaldenea



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: F/M, basically Christmas for Nords, drunk people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:21:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27959075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chaldenea/pseuds/Chaldenea
Summary: The Dragonborn and her companions celebrate the New Life Festival—a first for Miraak.
Relationships: Female Dovahkiin | Dragonborn/Miraak, Female Nord Dovahkiin | Dragonborn/Miraak
Kudos: 36





	1. The Bet

**Author's Note:**

> This will be a multi-chapter short story with its universe based on The Relic.  
> I hope you'll enjoy the extra Miraak content now that Christmas is near!

“I hope you are excited!” Teldryn patted Miraak’s back as they neared the tavern.

He grunted in annoyance. This whole festivity seemed like a waste of time; another useless opportunity for Nords to drown themselves in mead and make too much noise. Furthermore, the vivacity was a big change to the many years in solitude and silence, which was rather overwhelming.

“She certainly seems eager,” Miraak answered, pointing at the Dragonborn, who merrily hopped onto each icy step of the building’s entrance and opened its door with intense vigour. Her smile’s shine was brighter than the many torches garnishing the wooden pillars holding the inn together. It wasn’t usual for her to show happiness in such a clear way, and Miraak then wondered just how big of an event this was going to be.

Teldryn laughed at him. “You won’t see much of her the upcoming days, because she will be sick in bed and complaining endlessly. I advise you to hide as far away as possible.”

The fact that the mercenary had experienced multiple years by her side and decided to stay despite going through these pains made Miraak wonder if he had underestimated the Dunmer’s capability of being loyal.

Or, perhaps, he merely enjoyed losing himself in beverages as much as the average Nord did.

As they made their way inside, the heat from the central fireplace cooking up juicy roasts and vegetables immediately embraced his entire body, strongly contrasting the biting cold of Skyrim’s evening snowfall on the other side of the wooden walls.

There were multiple bards in one corner, their cheeks red and their clothes wet with either sweat or spilled mead. Some people clapped along the rhythm of their music—or at least they pitifully tried to.

“Welcome, brothers and sisters!” someone shouted from behind the counter, raising his cup at them. A bunch of other revellers turned around and greeted them with the same amount of enthusiasm.

Miraak merely scoffed.

“Now, whoever touches my roasted pig will have to fight me outside,” the Last Dragonborn threatened loudly, hurrying over to the rather big barrel of mead that stood next to the tavern owner’s counter.

“It’s tradition to get as many refills of mead as you want during the New Life Festival,” she explained after her eyes bounced back at Miraak’s raised eyebrow. She ignored the mead that splashed onto her feet after she overfilled her tankard.

“You called it Old Life Festival before,” Miraak pointed out, taking a short step back to avoid getting struck by the liquid.

“Yes, yes,” she merely answered while waving her hand as she walked towards the fireplace. The reflection of the flames intensified the sheen in her golden eyes as she studied the sizzling meal in anticipation.

“You don’t want any?” the tavern keeper asked Miraak, pointing at the barrel with a smile.

Realising he was probably the only person in the room whose desire to get drunk was absent, Miraak grunted, “No.” He then walked over to Teldryn, who had gotten himself a full plate of food in the meantime.

“I am not keen on sharing this,” the Dunmer said after a short pause in his movement, narrowing his eyes at the first Dragonborn at an attempt to appear threatening. Miraak scoffed at him and raised a hand.

“So, are we here just to eat and drink, then?” he then asked.

Teldryn chuckled. “You seem to be completely new to this. What did you do before your imprisonment?” He took a bite off his grilled leek.

Miraak raised his chin at him. “I served the dragons before I decided to slay them all.”

“Such fun company to have during this merry time,” his companion uttered sarcastically, turning the rest of his focus to his food.

“Hey, you!” someone shouted from behind them. “You seem like a strong guy. Join us in our bet and you might win the prize!”

Miraak blinked at the man, unimpressed.

“He will participate in my name!” the young Dovahkiin then shouted from her spot, standing up with one of her arms stretched out towards the roof. Her smirk was rather off-putting.

Miraak crossed his arms. It was going to be too easy for him to get any enjoyment out of it, rendering the whole idea a bore.

He caught the Dragonborn’s disgusting smirk out of the corner of his eye and decided to go for it nonetheless, stepping forward.

“Let us begin, then!” the drunkard then said, making some space on his small table and moving two chairs on opposite sides. The man rolled up his sleeves and readied his arm on the table top, waiting for Miraak to do the same.

He merely pulled off his glove, taking his time.

After three men had been defeated, the will to beat Miraak’s streak seemed to be rather high.

“Your girl said you are participating for her?” the next opponent asked, trying to escape the rather obvious defeat he was going to face.

Miraak grunted. “She is not my g—”

“Yes, he is,” the Dovahkiin interrupted Miraak. “I could step in, if you prefer to get your ass kicked by me, instead.” She grinned at him, her eyes filled with arrogance more than usual.

The man laughed.

He must have thought he was lucky.

“Move over,” urged the Last as she fluttered her fingers at her soulmate.

Miraak stood up, sighing as he positioned himself behind her chair. She took the last big sip out of her tankard before slamming it onto the table and readying her arm.

“Can’t wait to carry the cask home,” her opponent said, now confident.

It took a few seconds for the back of his hand to touch the wood.

The Dragonborn jumped out of her chair, her arms spread out over her shoulders as she yelled in celebration. “That barrel belongs to me!” Her thumb pointed towards her chest with an exaggerated motion.

Miraak pinched the bridge of his nose in vicarious embarrassment. The rest of the crowd cheered with her, even the men that lost to the two of them a short moment ago.

“Is this the moment we leave?” Miraak asked after walking over to her.

She raised her eyebrows as she turned towards him on her way towards the barrel. “Gods, no! We still have to do the Snow Bear Plunge!” she then said, shaking her head.

She was hard to understand, and it was hard to tell whether it was due to the noise of everyone celebrating or due to her intense drunken slurring.

Miraak also noticed how red her cheeks had become.

“And I presume that has something to do with ice-cold water?”

She vehemently nodded, her face lighting up with passion once more.

When he didn’t share her enthusiasm, she pushed a hand into his face as she usually did, making him grimace despite her being relatively gentle that time.

“You will join us,” she then commanded, poking him in the chest with one of her slim fingers.

This festival truly was vile.


	2. The Plunge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, another chapter. Have fun!

Not too long after, the crowd gathered outside before marching towards the coast. It had become completely dark outside and the snowing had stopped. A few men carried torches with them and others seemed to carry logs of firewood with them.

Miraak envied Teldryn for having been allowed to stay at the tavern. The Dragonborn’s silver tongue had become very convincing in the time Miraak and her had spent together, his own talent probably rubbing off on her. The only counter argument he had managed to get agreed with on was that he was going to try it only once.

To believe that he was once the ruler of an island, obeying no one.

Cursed Last.

They reached the water after not too long of a walk. “We’ll have a few drinks at the fire first,” the Dovahkiin explained to him, “and then we’ll jump into the water before returning to heat up again.” He noted how her slur was already diminishing, which meant that her motivation to get back to its stage was increasing.

“How pleasant,” he then deadpanned.

Of course, like every other silly decision the Nords made, it involved more drinking. Perhaps joining the Dragon Cult hadn’t been such a bad decision after all—at least the people were serious there.

If he remembered correctly, that is. The very few memories he held of that time mostly included absorbing souls.

“Ah”—Callisto bumped his shoulder—“you will enjoy it more than you believe, my friend!” He merely blinked at her wide grin.

The warmth of the tongues of flames was very welcome indeed. Most of the men were busy laughing and making crude jokes to each other, the Dovahkiin joining them with her drunken man’s laugh as well.

“Now where did you find Steel Arms over there?” one of the men eventually asked her, spreading a hand towards Miraak from the other side of the fire.

Miraak huffed in response, curious as to what Callisto was going to answer. He leaned onto his knees with his elbows and glanced at her, waiting.

“Oh, I pulled him straight out of a Daedric realm,” she laughed.

“That surely explains a lot!” The group laughed, and Miraak chuckled at how much she had fooled the men with her fine delivery.

They all toasted to Steel Arms.

The time to dip into the water had arrived, and something inside Miraak’s guts made him feel…odd.

He watched the others strip down to their mere undergarments and shivered at the thought of doing the same. His eyes drifted up towards the clear night sky yielding bright aurorae as he tried to distract himself.

“No hesitation,” the Dovahkiin warned him, accompanied by a raised finger. “That’s very much unlike you, Miraak.” She frowned at him, though it was hard to take her seriously with how inebriated her stare looked. He bit back a smile.

He then unbuckled his belt, mostly just to make her leave already.

The biting cold of the snow on his feet didn’t prepare him for the icy water whatsoever, and he rushed into it, joining the rest of the group with frantic movements as his breath quickly sped up more and more.

Most of the people yelled with invigoration. For Miraak, the majority of his nerves lost their sensation and the gush of air that touched his ears turned warm in comparison to the submerged parts of his body.

Someone spat a stream of water in his eyes, promptly giving him the urge to rinse with a hand.

The Dovahkiin laughed at him. “It’s time to get out; I am sure you’d prefer not to lose your precious body parts to frostbite.”

The flames felt like a sharp bite on his skin as he approached the log he had sat on before but he certainly welcomed its ability to bring back his sense of touch, however slowly.

Some linen was passed around and someone merrily handed him a tankard filled with mead. He accepted it wordlessly as he tried to clench back shudders. He barely felt the texture of the fabric on his shoulders.

“Now, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” the Dovahkiin said when she sat down next to him, rubbing her hands close to the fire before fetching herself a drink. Some of the drops falling off her wet hair landed on the carbonised wood with gentle hisses.

It was rather impressive how much life still flowed through her, especially relative to the men around them. He himself seemed to fend off the cold rather well, too. Of course, having the soul of a beast that lived on snowy mountain tops boosted one’s resistance to the cold. And not to forget how weak the Nord race had become over the past millennia—surely none of them would have been able to survive a mere day on Atmora.

The Dragonborn pulled on his linen, covering her own bare shoulders with it and holding it with one hand.

Miraak took a sip from his tankard, disappointed at having to share his blanket.

“You’re carrying home my barrel, by the way,” Callisto then told him, “and I will sit on it the whole time.”

He scoffed harshly. “Will you be too inebriated to walk on your own?” he asked, staring into his tankard before drinking some more of its content.

“Your companion knows you well, Dragonborn!” one of the men next to them laughed.

“I am merely making sure I will win the bet,” she answered, smirking at another man across the fire.

Of course, there had been yet another bet, kept secret from him as he certainly wouldn’t have approved of his part in it.

“And what bet are you talking about?” Miraak asked, looking at her with a raised eyebrow and unimpressed eyes.

“If she can’t reach her home tonight, she will hand over the barrel and gift a kiss to each one of us!” the man across the fire explained before finishing up his tankard.

Miraak’s breath slowly left his lungs as he stared into a random spot in the distance.

“I am not worried in the least,” the Dovahkiin tried to murmur to him as she leaned into him and hid her mouth from the others with a hand. The former dragon priest solely stared at her, reading her level of drunkenness based on how crooked her smirk was.

It looked more like a frozen twitch at that point.

“Now, now,” she then said, raising her voice again. “Kissing you is not part of the bet!” She laughed and a few other men joined her.

Miraak rubbed his eyes before standing up to refill his tankard.

Oh, what had he become? It seemed her own personality rubbed off on him just as much as his did on her.


	3. Company

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last one, just in time.  
> Thanks for reading!

“Be careful!” the Dunmer exclaimed in surprise as the Dovahkiin stumbled onto him, completely having lost her balance once again.

“She clearly is unable to walk,” Miraak commented. “It was rather difficult to get back here.” He recalled the many times she almost dropped face-first into the snow.

Teldryn looked up at him while trying to stabilise Callisto by holding her shoulders. “Fuck me, you can’t even stand properly.” He appeared to have a slur of his own, which didn’t encourage Miraak in the least.

“Let her sit down on the cask,” Miraak then said, pointing at the barrel of mead he had just put down in front of him.

His companion’s confused stare prompted Miraak to clear his throat.

“I need to be on it,” the Dovahkiin must have said right then.

“She will lose it otherwise,” the First explained further.

“None of what you’re saying is making sense to me, but I am not going to ask questions,” the mercenary finally said, guiding the young Dragonborn towards her barrel.

Once she had been more or less situated on its top, Miraak squatted down to pick it up and Teldryn’s eyes widened even further, making Miraak chuckle.

It was toilsome to walk with the Dovahkiin’s legs swirling around once the group had finally started the journey back home, but it surely was easier than having her walk beside him again.

“I told you I was going to win,” Callisto babbled, laughing.

Even then, her mood was peaking.

“How much have you had?” Teldryn asked Miraak. Callisto started counting on her fingers like a child and cackled.

“Plenty,” the ancient Nord merely responded, ignoring their female companion.

“I am frankly impressed by your tolerance!” she then said, poking him in the chest, even if it required her to twist her torso in a strange and uncomfortable way.

“And yours is quite disappointing, to say the least,” Miraak shot back, nodding towards her finger while looking at Teldryn, who silently obeyed him and moved it away again.

Only once they stood right at the Dovahkiin’s doorstep she decided to get off the barrel. It took Miraak a short moment to recover from the change in balance. It appeared his stamina suffered quite terribly under the influence of alcohol and he hated every second of it.

The fact that it had taken the Dovahkiin multiple attempts at unlocking her own door showed her level of intoxication was at an unsettling stage, knowing how well she usually was skilled in lockpicking even when drunk.

The torches hanging along the hallway’s walls were completely lit.

Alarmed, the trio slowly entered the building, the cask having been left on the floor outside.

“Don’t you dare leave it out there,” the Last Dragonborn growled to Miraak in a hushed voice, violently nodding at the barrel and pointing towards its general direction with a wobbling finger.

Miraak sighed and turned around again, securing the mead inside.

To think of her priorities.

Cheers echoed through the halls, presumably the exact moment Callisto had reached the living area.

Of course, her friends sneaked into her house to celebrate even more. He really should have seen it coming.

“We weren’t going to let you drink that one alone!” someone laughed loudly.

Miraak retired to his guest chamber in silence, seeking to disappear for the night and get some much-needed rest. He sat down on his bed and took off his boots. His vision was blurrier than he liked to admit, but at least he was able to enjoy his solitude for the rest of the night.

As if summoned just in spite, someone knocked, and the past year had taught him to recognise the sound of the Dovahkiin’s scrawny knuckles’ impact on any door.

“I don’t appreciate your drunken company,” Miraak said as she opened the door and stared at him from the frame with a raised eyebrow. Her guests’ voices echoed through the corridor’s walls.

“Ah,” she started, walking closer. “That is because you appreciate my company regardless of level of inebriation, admit it.”

The former dragon priest chuckled. It seemed she had learned quite a bit about him the past year, as well.

He basked in the peaceful silence once the door behind her fell close again. She then sat down next to him and handed him one of her fancy tankards before leaning back onto her elbow.

“What about your guests?” Miraak asked.

“Mm, Teldryn can be host for a while. Not like it is hard to keep them entertained, especially while they get to devour my beloved cask.” She took a large sip of mead.

Miraak placed his mug on the floor and let himself fall onto his back, relishing in the soft material of the blanket underneath. He sighed in pleasure despite the sensation of the entire world spinning.

“How interesting,” Callisto laughed. “I have been through countless fights with you, and the only time I see you this exhausted is after a few drinks?”

He shot her a mean glare. “I remember you complimenting my tolerance earlier,” he mumbled.

“Yes, and I take that back,” she laughed.

She finished her tankard before carelessly dropping it onto the carpet.

The mattress shook as she lay down next to him completely, reigniting the feeling of vertigo in Miraak’s head. He growled and put a hand over his eyes at an attempt to soothe the sensation.

“Yes, yes. It will go away in a short while,” she said, snuggling into the blanket with her cheek and breathing out heavily.

Miraak’s eyebrow creased. “You are not spending the night in my bed, so get up.”

She merely groaned in response, her facial expression untouched by his command.

Miraak sat up and grabbed his tankard before emptying it onto her face.

Her unsettled scream made him laugh.

“You prefer sleeping in a wet bed rather than letting me stay?” she asked, wiping her face.

“Well perceived, Dragonborn.”

She sat up and wiped her face with a hand, promptly smearing it onto his cheek with an evil chuckle.

Miraak grunted in disgust, mostly at the smell. He harshly grabbed her wrist and scowled at her, which made her laugh even louder.

An idea crept its way into his head and he smiled.

“Aw,” Callisto then said, “aren’t you—”

“FUS,” Miraak’s thu’um echoed through his chamber, wildly blowing the curtains on his bed.

The Dragonborn yelled in surprise and blinked a few times before registering what had just happened.

Her messy hair had settled in a hilarious way. It was Miraak’s turn to laugh out loud.

“I have merely done you a favour,” he then joked, chuckling at her intense frown.

Callisto’s leg snapped onto his shoulder and pushed him into his mattress, barely leaving him enough room to breathe. His hands grasped at her thigh to no avail.

Someone knocked on the door and slowly opened it.

“Shut it!” Callisto barked, not even turning around to look at whoever stood there, eyes wide open in confusion. Miraak waved his wide hands in the air, but the person closed the door with no further comment.

Once he had given up, he merely looked into her fiery eyes. His hands fell onto the blanket with a soft thud.

“You should apologise, especially since it is New Life Festival,” she growled.

Miraak coughed in response.

“That shall be enough.”

He wasn’t going to question her mercy.

She dropped next to him once again, staring into the ceiling in silence.

Something tingled in Miraak’s gut. “You don’t feel well.”

The young Dragonborn merely shook her head.

“Well,” Miraak started as he sat up, breathing in deeply, “I wish you good luck with that.”

He left the bed and removed some of the creases on his robes by patting them down.

“Hey, Miraak,” Callisto then said, her voice soft. He stopped to look at her.

“It was nice having you around this year,” she concluded.

Miraak hummed. “It was fun, yes.”

“Are you going to join next y—”

“Perhaps.”

He caught a glimpse of her smile before turning to leave the room.


End file.
